Robert Boyle

• Born: 25 January 1627
• Birthplace: Lismore Castle, County Waterford, Ireland
• Died: 31 December 1691
• Best Known As: 17th century chemist who came up with Boyle's law

Robert Boyle was a 17th century intellectual whose emphasis on experimentation and quantification helped lay the foundation for modern chemistry. Born in Ireland to an aristocratic family, he entered Eton College at the age of 8. He then toured Europe and studied abroad as a young teenager, at one point having a religious experience that turned him into a devoted Christian. A student of natural philosophy, he proposed an early atomic theory of matter, formulated the first definition of an element and conducted rigorous experiments with detailed documentation. With his Oxford assistant Robert Hooke, Boyle devised an air pump that allowed him to experiment with vacuums and the properties of gases, metals, combustion and sound. He is known for Boyle's law, which states that the pressure and volume of gas at a constant temperature have an inversely proportional relationship (in France it is known as Mariotte's law, for Edme Mariotte). A prolific writer throughout his career, he wrote on matters of science and religion and posthumously financed a lecture series designed to use science to defend Christianity.

For more information on Robert Boyle, visit Britannica.com.

Robert Boyle

Library of Congress

[b. Lismore Castle, Ireland, January 25, 1627, d. London, December 30, 1691]

Boyle's name is most closely associated with his contribution to the gas laws, but his greatest influence was on chemistry. He was the first to develop modern concepts of element and compound; to distinguish between acids, bases, and neutral substances; and to conduct and publish experiments along the lines now called the scientific method. In his work with a vacuum he demonstrated that all masses fall toward Earth with the same acceleration and that the vacuum does not conduct sound but does conduct the electric force.

The British chemist, physicist, and natural philosopher Robert Boyle (1627-1691) was a leading advocate of "corpuscular philosophy." He made important contributions to chemistry, pneumatics, and the theory of matter.

The seventh son and fourteenth child of the 1st Earl of Cork, Robert Boyle was born on Jan. 25, 1627, at Lismore Castle in County Cork, Ireland. His father was one of the richest and most powerful men in Ireland, and throughout his life Boyle enjoyed, in addition to his native talents, the advantages of position, family, and wealth. At the age of eight he was sent to school at Eton and then in 1638 to Geneva, Switzerland, where he was privately tutored for the next two years. Upon the death of his father, Boyle returned in 1644 to England, where after some initial delay he settled at the manor of Stalbridge in Dorsetshire, which he had inherited from his father.

Boyle devoted much time to study and writing, and although he wrote extensively on ethical and religious topics, he became increasingly interested in natural philosophy. He interested himself in nearly all aspects of physics, chemistry, medicine, and natural history, although it was chemistry that "bewitched" him and primarily occupied his time.

In 1652 Boyle left Stalbridge for Ireland, where 10 years of civil war had seriously disordered the family estates. During his stay he continued to pursue his scientific interests. In 1654 he settled in Oxford, then the scientific center of England. He there associated himself with a group interested in the "new learning." This group, including many of the leading scientific figures of the day, quickly recognized Boyle's exceptional abilities, and he became a regular participant in their activities, pursuing particularly his interest in chemistry.

Pneumatic Investigations

Soon after his arrival in Oxford, Boyle's researches took on an additional dimension. Having learned in 1657 of the vacuum pump recently invented by Otto von Guericke, Boyle immediately set Robert Hooke, his brillant assistant (and later an eminent scientist in his own right), the task of devising an improved version. Utilizing this improved pump Boyle immediately began a long series of investigations designed to test properties of the air and to clearly establish its physical nature. Boyle's first account of these "pneumatic" investigations was entitled New Experiments, Physico-Mechanical, Touching the Spring of the Air and Its Effects (1660). He continued his study of air and vacuum throughout the rest of his life, and although his experiments with the "Boyleian vacuum" (as it came to be known) were repeated by many, no one in the 17th century surpassed Boyle's ingenuity or technique.

Boyle made extensive studies of the elasticity of the air and of its necessity for various physical phenomena, such as combustion, the propagation of sound, and the survival of animals. He verified Galileo's conclusions about the behavior of falling bodies by studying the rate at which a light body fell, both in air and in a vacuum. By placing a Torricellian barometer in the receptacle of his pump, he also verified that it was indeed air pressure which supported the column of mercury. When his conclusions about the relationship between the pressure of the air and the weight of the mercury it would support were challenged, he produced a series of experiments demonstrating that for a given quantity of air the volume is inversely proportional to the pressure, a relationship now known as Boyle's law.

Corpuscular Philosophy

The Sceptical Chymist (1661), although one of Boyle's more theoretical works and suffering from his usual lack of organization, well illustrates his contention that all scientific investigation must be firmly based on experiment. Directing his attack at what he conceived as the erroneous foundations of contemporary chemical theory, he brought forth extensive experimental evidence to refute the prevailing Aristotelian and Paracelsian concepts of a small number of basic elements or principles to which all compounds could be reduced by chemical analysis. He demonstrated that common chemical substances when decomposed by heat not only failed to yield the requisite number of elements or principles, but that the number was a function of the techniques employed. Accordingly, he denied that elements or principles (as thus defined) had any real existence and sought to replace these older concepts of chemical change with what he termed the "corpuscular philosophy."

Although he emphasized the necessity of basing scientific research on experiment, Boyle was not a simple empiricist. Behind his more specific and detailed work was a general theory of the structure of matter; and his continued advocacy of the mechanical philosophy - that is, explanation in terms of matter and motion - was one of his most significant contributions. According to Boyle's corpuscular philosophy, God had originally formed matter in tiny particles of varying sizes and shapes. These particles tended to combine in groups or clusters which, because of their compactness, had a reasonably continuous existence and were the basic units of chemical and physical processes. Any change in the shape, size, or motion of these basic clusters altered the properties of the substance involved, although chemical reactions were generally conceived as involving primarily the association and dissociation of various clusters.

Boyle also made significant contributions to experimental chemistry. He made extensive studies of the calcination of metals, of combustion, and of the properties of acids and bases. He emphasized the application of physical techniques to chemical investigation and developed the use of chemical indicators which showed characteristic color changes in the presence of certain types of substances. His pioneering study of phosphorus, during which he discovered nearly all the properties known for the next two centuries, well illustrates the effectiveness of his experimental techniques.

Science and Religion

An influential public figure, Boyle was often at court and was among those who in 1662 used their influence to obtain a charter for the Royal Society. He was a charter member of the society, as well as one of its initial council members, and provided the society with two of its most influential early officials: Henry Oldenburg, who had been tutor to Boyle's nephew, was appointed the society's first secretary, and Robert Hooke became its first curator.

In 1668 Boyle moved to London. As a leading figure of English science and a member of a prominent family, he was offered numerous honors, including a peerage and a bishopric, all of which he declined, insisting that he preferred to remain a simple gentleman. In 1680 he even refused the presidency of the Royal Society on the grounds that his conscience was, as he said, "tender" about subscribing to the necessary oaths.

Throughout his life Boyle maintained a deep and pervasive religious commitment. As an active supporter of missionary work, he was appointed by the King the governor of the Corporation for Propagating the Gospel in New England. He was particularly concerned, however, with demonstrating that science and religion were not only reconcilable but in fact integrally related, and in his effort to promote this belief he produced numerous essays and tracts on religion and natural theology. He died on Dec. 30, 1691, and in addition to leaving much of his estate for the furtherance of various Christian endeavors, he provided in his will for the establishment of an annual series of sermons, in his words, "for proving the Christian Religion against notorious Infidels." These sermons, known as the Boyle Lectures, became by tradition one of the primary platforms for promoting the belief that in the study of nature could be found much of the evidence for religion.

Further Reading

Boyle's better-known writings are collected in Thomas Birch, ed., The Works of the Honourable Robert Boyle (5 vols., 1744; new ed., 6 vols., 1772), together with an account of his life which is the principal source of all subsequent biographies. Although not entirely satisfactory, the standard biography is Louis Trenchard More, The Life and Works of the Honorable Robert Boyle (1944). A briefer account, with extensive selections from his more important works, is Marie Boas Hall, Robert Boyle on Natural Philosophy (1965), while the significance of Boyle's chemical studies is discussed at length in her Robert Boyle and Seventeenth-Century Chemistry (1958). A case study of his work in pneumatics is contained in James Bryant Conant, ed., Harvard Case Histories in Experimental Science (2 vols., 1957).

Boyle, Robert (1627-91). Famous for his work on air pressure, Boyle was the youngest son of the 1st earl of Cork. During the 1650s he belonged to the ‘invisible college’, so called because they never all met together, associated with John Wilkins at Wadham College, Oxford. Crucial in the scientific revolution in England, this was a nucleus for the Royal Society.

Boyle, Robert (1627-1691), scientist; a son of Richard Boyle, Earl of Cork. Born in Lismore, Co. Waterford, he was a founder-member of the Dublin Philosophical Society (later RDS), best remembered for ‘Boyle's Law’, regarding the volume of gases under pressure. His writings include The Sceptical Chymist (1661) and Occasional Reflections (1665). He studied Scripture in the ancient languages and funded William Bedell's Irish Bible.

Boyle, Robert (1627-92) Irish scientist. Born the fourteenth son of the first earl of Cork, Boyle was able to pursue an independent life devoted to scientific and academic matters. He was the most important British chemist of his time, whose work on gases is remembered in Boyle's law. He was an important figure in the 17th-century rejection of Aristotelian emphases on final causes, believing that all the properties of materials can be explained by the size, shape, and motion of particles, and the textures to which their associations give rise. His major work was The Sceptical Chemist (1661), but he wrote widely not only on chemical but on philosophical and theological matters. His General History of the Air was published in 1692. His conception of the qualities of things, and the division between primary and secondary qualities, was a major influence on Locke.

Boyle, Robert (1627–1691), natural philosopher and lay theologian. Boyle was born in Ireland, the youngest son of Richard Boyle (1566–1643), earl of Cork, and was raised as an aristocrat. After attending Eton, Robert Boyle embarked on a grand tour. When his travels were cut short as a result of the economic upheavals caused by the Irish Rebellion, he made his way back to England, where he found his sister, Katherine Ranelagh, living in London. After a brief stay with her (during which he became acquainted with the Puritan reformers of the Dury Circle), Boyle moved in 1645 to "Stalbridge," the estate in Dorset he had inherited from his father. There he wrote a number of ethical treatises and other moralistic pieces before becoming more interested in experimental philosophy. In 1649 he set up a laboratory at Stalbridge and began systematic studies in chemistry (and alchemy).

In 1655 or 1656 Boyle moved to Oxford, where he became a part of the experimental natural philosophy group. There he published some of his more important works in natural philosophy, including New Experiments Physico-Mechanical Touching the Spring of Air and Its Effects (1660), The Sceptical Chymist (1661), and The Origin of Forms and Qualities according to the Corpuscular Philosophy (1666). In 1668 Boyle moved back to London, where he became one of the founding members of the Royal Society of London. He established a laboratory in his sister's home and lived with her for the remainder of his life. Boyle continued his experiments and publications in natural philosophy and in addition published a number of works that were either primarily theological in nature or works in which it is impossible to separate his theological concerns from his work in natural philosophy. Among these are The Excellency of Theology Compar'd with Natural Philosophy (1674), A Free Enquiry into the Vulgarly Receiv'd Notion of Nature (1686), A Discourse of Things above Reason (1681), A Disquisition about the Final Causes of Natural Things (1688), and The Christian Virtuoso (1690).

As a natural philosopher, Boyle is best remembered for Boyle's Law, for advocating a corpuscularian matter theory, and for being extremely influential in the development of an empirical and experimental method. He had a marked aversion to speculative metaphysics, and in Notion of Nature argued against attributing any ontological status to either the Aristotelian notion of "nature" (as in "Nature abhors a vacuum") or to the "hylarchic principle" (or "plastick nature") of the Cambridge Platonists. Boyle argued that entities such as these are not needed to explain the phenomena and ought not be admitted into a theory of nature on the grounds of Ockham's razor (the principle that entities ought not to be multiplied beyond necessity).

Boyle is still honored in introductory chemistry texts as the "father of modern chemistry," the natural philosopher who successfully separated chemistry from its alchemical antecedents. This claim, however, is based on the fact that the work in which he is supposed to have done this, The Sceptical Chymist, was misinterpreted until the late twentieth century. Rather than being an attack on alchemy, the work is instead an attack only on certain practitioners and textbook writers—most specifically those who divorced alchemy from any theoretical underpinning. Indeed Boyle was quite involved in alchemical pursuits throughout his life, both in attempts to transmute base metals into gold and in the investigation of alchemical processes for medicinal purposes.

During his lifetime and after his death Boyle was honored as much for his piety as for his work as an experimental philosopher. Boyle considered the investigation of the world God created as a way of worshiping God, seeing the created world as a temple and the investigator of that world as a priest. He was painfully aware of the growing suspicion that the revival of Epicureanism (in the form of the corpuscular philosophy) might lead to a materialist worldview and an accompanying atheism, and he published work after work in which he attempted to show that the astute natural philosopher would become a more devout Christian rather than being led to question God's existence or providence. He advocated a natural theology that was typical of the time, showing that reason alone could prove God's existence and the immateriality of the soul.

Boyle was quite clear, however, that this natural philosophy was only the first step toward belief and that its main purpose was to serve as a bridge to revelation. As Boyle expressed it, knowing that God exists and having come to admire his workmanship, one naturally wants to learn more about the deity, and fortunately God has provided that knowledge via revelation. Boyle wrote extensively in an attempt to privilege the mysteries of Christianity from rational scrutiny, arguing that just as there are aspects of nature that human beings cannot (yet) understand, so too are there mysteries revealed in Scripture that human beings cannot (yet) understand. Indeed Boyle went so far as to argue that, where revelation is concerned, it is sometimes necessary for human reason to affirm apparently contradictory truths, such as God's prescience and human beings' free will (emphasizing that God, in his infinite wisdom, understands how such apparent contradictions are in fact consistent).

The unity of Boyle's thought is revealed in his voluntarism (his emphasis on God's will and power rather than on God's goodness and reason). In Boyle's view God was free to create any world whatsoever. The only way to discover the nature of God's creation is to investigate it, and (because the world was created commensurate to God's infinite understanding rather than to finite human understanding), there will always be aspects of this world that humans are unable to comprehend. The same thing is true of the mysteries of Christianity. God has reserved a full understanding of both nature and theology for the afterlife, thereby providing an incentive for godly living and belief.

Bibliography

Primary Sources

Boyle, Robert. The Correspondence of Robert Boyle. 6 vols. Edited by Michael Hunter, Antonio Clericuzio, and Lawrence M. Principe. London, 2001.

——. The Early Essays and Ethics of Robert Boyle. Edited by John T. Harwood. Carbondale and Edwardsville, Ill., 1991.

——. Robert Boyle: By Himself and His Friends: With a Fragment of William Wotton's Lost "Life of Boyle." Edited by Michael Hunter. London, 1994.

——. The Works of Robert Boyle. 14 vols. Edited by Michael Hunter and Edward B. Davis. London and Brookfield, Vt., 1999–2000.

Secondary Sources

Anstey, Peter R. The Philosophy of Robert Boyle. London and New York, 2000.

Clericuzio, Antonio. Elements, Principles, and Corpuscles: A Study of Atomism and Chemistry in the Seventeenth Century. Dordrecht, 2000.

Hunter, Michael. Robert Boyle (1627–91): Scrupulosity and Science. Woodbridge, U.K., 2000.

Hunter, Michael, ed. Robert Boyle Reconsidered. Cambridge, U.K., 1994.

Principe, Lawrence M. The Aspiring Adept: Robert Boyle and His Alchemical Quest. Princeton, 1998.

"Robert Boyle (1627–91)." Robert Boyle Project, University of London. Directed by Michael Hunter. Available: www.bbk.ac.uk/Boyle/index.html.

Sargent, Rose-Mary. The Diffident Naturalist: Robert Boyle and the Philosophy of Experiment. Chicago, 1995.

Shapin, Steven. A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth-Century England. Chicago, 1994.

Shapin, Steven, and Simon Schaffer. Leviathan and the Air- Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life. Princeton, 1985.

Wojcik, Jan W. Robert Boyle and the Limits of Reason. Cambridge, U.K., 1997.

—JAN W. WOJCIK

For the art director, see Robert F. Boyle.

Robert Boyle
Robert Boyle (1627-1691)
Born	25 January 1627 County Waterford, Ireland
Died	31 December 1691 (aged 64) London, England
Residence	England
Nationality	Irish
Fields	Physics, chemistry
Known for	Study of physical properties of gases Study of the concept of an element
Influenced	Robert Hooke
Religious stance	Anglican[1]

Robert Boyle (25 January 1627 – 31 December 1691) was a natural philosopher, chemist, physicist, inventor, and gentleman scientist, also noted for his writings in theology. He is best known for the formulation of Boyle's law.^[2] Although his research and personal philosophy clearly has its roots in the alchemical tradition, he is largely regarded today as the first modern chemist, and therefore one of the founders of modern chemistry. Among his works, The Sceptical Chymist is seen as a cornerstone book in the field of chemistry.

Contents 1 Early years 2 Middle years 3 Later years 4 Scientific investigator 5 Important works 6 See also 7 References 8 Further reading 9 Boyle's published works online 10 External links

Early years

Boyle was born in Lismore Castle, in County Waterford, Ireland, the seventh son and fourteenth child of Richard Boyle, 1st Earl of Cork. Richard Boyle had arrived in Ireland in 1588 as an entrepreneur, and had amassed enormous landholdings by the time Robert was born. While still a child, Robert learned to speak Latin, Greek and French. He was not yet eight years old when, following the death of his mother, he was sent to Eton College in England, at which his father's friend, Sir Henry Wotton, was then the provost. After spending over three years at Eton, Robert traveled abroad with a French tutor. They visited Italy in 1641, and remained in Florence during the winter of that year, studying the "paradoxes of the great star-gazer" Galileo Galilei — Galileo was elderly, but still alive in Florence in 1641. The death of Galileo influenced Boyle to study astronomy and mechanics.^{[citation needed]}

Middle years

Boyle returned to England from the Continent in mid 1644 with a keen interest in science.^[3] His father had died the previous year and had left him the manor of Stalbridge in Dorset, together with some estates in Ireland. From that time, he devoted his life to scientific research, and soon took a prominent place in the band of inquirers, known as the "Invisible College", who devoted themselves to the cultivation of the "new philosophy". They met frequently in London, often at Gresham College; some of the members also had meetings at Oxford, and in that city Boyle went to reside in 1654. Reading in 1657 of Otto von Guericke's air-pump, he set himself with the assistance of Robert Hooke to devise improvements in its construction, and with the result, the "machina Boyleana" or "Pneumatical Engine", finished in 1659, he began a series of experiments on the properties of air.^[2] An inscription can be found on the wall of University College, Oxford in the High Street at Oxford (now the location of the Shelley Memorial), marking the spot where Cross Hall stood until the early 1800s. It was here that Boyle rented rooms from the wealthy apothecary who owned the Hall.

An account of Boyle's work with the air pump was published in 1660 under the title New Experiments Physico-Mechanicall, Touching the Spring of the Air, and its Effects.... Among the critics of the views put forward in this book was a Jesuit, Franciscus Linus (1595–1675), and it was while answering his objections that Boyle made his first mention of the law that the volume of a gas varies inversely to the pressure of the gas, which among English-speaking people is usually called after his name.

However, the person that originally formulated the hypothesis was Henry Power in 1661. Boyle included a reference to a paper written by Power, but mistakenly attributed it to Richard Townley. In continental Europe the hypothesis is sometimes attributed to Edme Mariotte, although he did not publish it until 1676 and was likely aware of Boyle's work at the time.^[4] In 1663 the Invisible College became the Royal Society of London for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge, and the charter of incorporation granted by Charles II of England, named Boyle a member of the council. In 1680 he was elected president of the society, but declined the honour from a scruple about oaths.

It was during his time at Oxford that Boyle was a Chevalier. The Chevaliers are thought to have been established by royal order a few years before Boyle's time at Oxford. The period of Boyle's residence was marked by the reactionary actions of the victorious parliamentarian forces, consequently this period marked the most secretive period of Chevalier movements and thus little is known about Boyle's involvement beyond his membership.

In 1668 he left Oxford for London where he resided at the house of his sister, Lady Ranelagh, in Pall Mall.

Later years

Plaque at the site of Boyle and Hooke's experiments in Oxford. See also The Boyle-Hooke plaque.

In 1689 his health, never very strong, began to fail seriously and he gradually withdrew from his public engagements, ceasing his communications to the Royal Society, and advertising his desire to be excused from receiving guests, "unless upon occasions very extraordinary", on Tuesday and Friday forenoon, and Wednesday and Saturday afternoon. In the leisure thus gained he wished to "recruit his spirits, range his papers", and prepare some important chemical investigations which he proposed to leave "as a kind of Hermetic legacy to the studious disciples of that art", but of which he did not make known the nature. His health became still worse in 1691, and he died on 31 December that year, just a week after that of the sister with whom he had lived for more than twenty years. Robert Boyle died from paralysis. He was buried in the churchyard of St Martin's in the Fields, his funeral sermon being preached by his friend Bishop Gilbert Burnet. In his will, Boyle endowed a series of Lectures which came to be known as the Boyle Lectures.

Scientific investigator

Boyle's air pump.

Boyle's great merit as a scientific investigator is that he carried out the principles which Francis Bacon preached in the Novum Organum. Yet he would not avow himself a follower of Bacon, or indeed of any other teacher. On several occasions he mentions that in order to keep his judgment as unprepossessed as might be with any of the modern theories of philosophy, until he was "provided of experiments" to help him judge of them, he refrained from any study of the Atomical and the Cartesian systems, and even of the Novum Organum itself, though he admits to "transiently consulting" them about a few particulars. Nothing was more alien to his mental temperament than the spinning of hypotheses. He regarded the acquisition of knowledge as an end in itself, and in consequence he gained a wider outlook on the aims of scientific inquiry than had been enjoyed by his predecessors for many centuries. This, however, did not mean that he paid no attention to the practical application of science nor that he despised knowledge which tended to use.

Boyle was an alchemist; and believing the transmutation of metals to be a possibility, he carried out experiments in the hope of effecting it; and he was instrumental in obtaining the repeal, in 1689, of the statute of Henry IV against multiplying gold and silver. With all the important work he accomplished in physics – the enunciation of Boyle's law, the discovery of the part taken by air in the propagation of sound, and investigations on the expansive force of freezing water, on specific gravities and refractive powers, on crystals, on electricity, on colour, on hydrostatics, etc. – chemistry was his peculiar and favourite study. His first book on the subject was The Sceptical Chymist, published in 1661, in which he criticized the "experiments whereby vulgar Spagyrists are wont to endeavour to evince their Salt, Sulphur and Mercury to be the true Principles of Things.". For him chemistry was the science of the composition of substances, not merely an adjunct to the arts of the alchemist or the physician. He advanced towards the modern view of elements as the undecomposable constituents of material bodies; and understanding the distinction between mixtures and compounds, he made considerable progress in the technique of detecting their ingredients, a process which he designated by the term "analysis". He further supposed that the elements were ultimately composed of particles of various sorts and sizes, into which, however, they were not to be resolved in any known way. Applied chemistry had to thank him for improved methods and for an extended knowledge of individual substances. He also studied the chemistry of combustion and of respiration, and conducted experiments in physiology, where, however, he was hampered by the "tenderness of his nature" which kept him from anatomical dissections, especially of living animals, though he knew them to be "most instructing".

Besides being a busy natural philosopher, Boyle devoted much time to theology, showing a very decided leaning to the practical side and an indifference to controversial polemics. At the Restoration he was favourably received at court, and in 1665 would have received the provostship of Eton College, if he would have taken orders; but this he refused to do on the ground that his writings on religious subjects would have greater weight coming from a layman than a paid minister of the Church. As a director of the East India Company he spent large sums in promoting the spread of Christianity in the East, contributing liberally to missionary societies, and to the expenses of translating the Bible or portions of it into various languages. He founded the Boyle Lectures, intended to defend the Christian religion against those he considered "notorious infidels, namely atheists, deists, pagans, Jews and Muslims", with the provision that controversies between Christians were not to be mentioned. In 2004, the Boyle Lectures were resurrected in London.^[5]

In person Boyle was tall, slender and of a pale countenance. His constitution was far from robust, and throughout his life he suffered from feeble health and low spirits. While his scientific work procured him an extraordinary reputation among his contemporaries, his private character and virtues, the charm of his social manners, his wit and powers of conversation, endeared him to a large circle of personal friends. He was never married. His writings are exceedingly voluminous, and his style is clear and straightforward, though undeniably verbose.^[6]

Important works

Title page of The Sceptical Chymist (1661).

Boyle's self-flowing flask, a perpetual motion machine, appears to fill itself through siphon action ("hydrostatic perpetual motion").^[7] This is not possible in reality; a siphon requires its "output" to be lower than the "input".

The following are some of the more important of his works:

• 1660 – New Experiments Physico-Mechanical: Touching the Spring of the Air and their Effects
• 1661 - The Sceptical Chymist
• 1663 – Considerations touching the Usefulness of Experimental Natural Philosophy (followed by a second part in 1671)
• 1664 – Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours, with Observations on a Diamond that Shines in the Dark
• 1665 – New Experiments and Observations upon Cold
• 1666 – Hydrostatical Paradoxes
• 1666 – Origin of Forms and Qualities according to the Corpuscular Philosophy
• 1669 – a continuation of his work on the spring of air
• 1670 – demonstrated that a reduction in ambient pressure could lead to bubble formation in living tissue. This description of a viper in a vacuum was the first recorded description of decompression sickness.^[8]
• 1670 – tracts about the Cosmical Qualities of Things, the Temperature of the Subterraneal and Submarine Regions, the Bottom of the Sea, &c. with an Introduction to the History of Particular Qualities
• 1672 – Origin and Virtues of Gems
• 1673 – Essays of the Strange Subtilty, Great Efficacy, Determinate Nature of Effluviums
• 1674 – two volumes of tracts on the Saltiness of the Sea, Suspicions about the Hidden Realities of the Air, Cold, Celestial Magnets, Animadversions on Hobbes's Problemata de Vacuo
• 1676 – Experiments and Notes about the Mechanical Origin or Production of Particular Qualities, including some notes on electricity and magnetism
• 1678 – Observations upon an artificial Substance that Shines without any Preceding Illustration
• 1680 – the Aerial Noctiluca
• 1682 – New Experiments and Observations upon the Icy Noctiluca
• 1682 – a further continuation of his work on the air
• 1684 – Memoirs for the Natural History of the Human Blood
• 1685 – Short Memoirs for the Natural Experimental History of Mineral Waters
• 1686 – A Free Enquiry into the Vulgarly Received Notion of Nature
• 1690 – Medicina Hydrostatica
• 1691 – Experimentae et Observationes Physicae

Among his religious and philosophical writings were:

• 1648/1660 – Seraphic Love, written in 1648, but not published until 1660
• 1663 – An Essay upon the Style of the Holy Scriptures
• 1664 – Excellence of Theology compared with Natural Philosophy
• 1665 – Occasional Reflections upon Several Subjects, which was ridiculed by Swift in A Meditation Upon a Broom-Stick, and by Butler in An Occasional Reflection on Dr Charlton's Feeling a Dog's Pulse at Gresham College
• 1675 – Some Considerations about the Reconcileableness of Reason and Religion, with a Discourse about the Possibility of the Resurrection
• 1687 – The Martyrdom of Theodora And Didymus
• 1690 – The Christian Virtuoso

See also

• Ambrose Godfrey, phosphorus manufacturer who started as Boyle's assistant
• Anaerobic digestion, history section
• An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump, a painting of a demonstration of one of Boyle's experiments
• Boyle temperature, thermodynamic quantity named after Boyle
• Lismore Castle
• List of people on stamps of Ireland
• Pneumatic chemistry
• Timeline of hydrogen technologies
• Bloodhound
• List of Irish people

References

1. ^ Deem, Rich (2005). "The Religious Affiliation of Robert Boyle the father of modern chemistry. From: Famous Scientists Who Believed in God". adherents.com. http://www.adherents.com/people/pb/Robert_Boyle.html. Retrieved 2009-04-17. 
2. ^ ^{a b} Acott, Chris (1999). "The diving "Law-ers": A brief resume of their lives.". South Pacific Underwater Medicine Society journal 29 (1). ISSN 0813-1988. OCLC 16986801. http://archive.rubicon-foundation.org/5990. Retrieved 2009-04-17. 
3. ^ See biographies of Robert Boyle at [1], [2], [3] and [4] .
4. ^ Brush, Stephen G. (2003). The Kinetic Theory of Gases: An Anthology of Classic Papers with Historical Commentary. History of Modern Physical Sciences Vol 1. Imperial College Press. ISBN 1860943489. 
5. ^ "The Boyle Lecture". St. Marylebow Church. http://www.stmarylebow.co.uk/?Boyle_Lecture. 
6. ^ Encyclopædia Britannica (1911)
7. ^ Arthur W. J. G. Ord-Hume (2006). Perpetual Motion: The History of an Obsession. Adventures Unlimited Press. ISBN 1931882517. http://books.google.com/books?id=022yYXnS_GQC&pg=PA94&dq=boyle%27s-perpetual-motion-scheme&lr=&as_brr=0&ei=F5s8SVqU3JME9NackQQ. 
8. ^ Acott, C. (1999). "A brief history of diving and decompression illness.". South Pacific Underwater Medicine Society journal 29 (2). ISSN 0813-1988. OCLC 16986801. http://archive.rubicon-foundation.org/6004. Retrieved 2009-04-17. 

Further reading

• Stephen Shapin and Simon Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air-Pump.
• Lawrence Principe, The Aspiring Adept: Robert Boyle and His Alchemical Quest
• John F. Fulton, A Bibliography of the Honourable Robert Boyle, Fellow of the Royal Society. Second edition. Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1961.

Boyle's published works online

• Essay on the Virtue of Gems Gem and Diamond Foundation
• Experiments Touching Colours: Gem and Diamond Foundation, Project Gutenberg
• Boyle Papers University of London

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Robert Boyle

• "Robert Boyle" article by J. J. MacIntosh and Peter Anstey in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Robert Boyle", MacTutor History of Mathematics archive .
• Robert Boyle and Robert Hooke
• Robert Boyle Project, Birkbeck, University of London
• The Boyle's Educational Foundation
• Summary juxtaposition of Boyle's The Sceptical Chymist and his The Christian Virtuoso
• The Relationship between Science and Scripture in the Thought of Robert Boyle
• Robert Boyle and His Alchemical Quest : Including Boyle's "Lost" Dialogue on the Transmutation of Metals, Princeton University Press, 1998, ISBN 0691050821

• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
• This article incorporates public domain text from: Cousin, John William (1910). A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature. London, J. M. Dent & sons; New York, E. P. Dutton.

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